I believe it's possible. Whether it's demonstrable is a completely separate question. It's logically possible for divine intervention to occur in a way that's indistinguishable from non-divine intervention.

I've used this type of analogy before.

Let's imagine that we're flipping coins 1,000 times. If there's some sort of intervention (divine or otherwise) that caused the data point at position 572 to be altered, would you be able to detect it from looking at the outcomes alone?

Nope. I do not have a sufficient reason to do so.

Much as you like to use the analogy that shoving your hand on a hot stove may or may not result in burns (depending on how the pixie feels about it), I'd bet you have never tried it yourself more than once.

Good for you buddy.

"Is the sky green?"

"No, I do not believe so."

Goody, d2. Right again.

Did I do good, Aaron?

I can't even start to count the stupid.

Your idea of "divine intervention" is something that can't be witnessed or evidenced.

No ****, Sherlock, it's entirely possible that my imaginary friend, "Freddy" made #572 heads, too.

Are you ****ing serious with this???

Someone is about to go on monkey tilt. Maybe you should take a break.

I do not use "specious" and "fallacious" as synonyms. I would say an argument is fallacious to mean that it involves some error of reasoning (as opposed to errors of fact). I would use "specious" to mean an argument which might or might not be fallacious, but doesn't really address the issue people are arguing about even though it appears to do so. For example, ad hominem arguments are often specious arguments.

Actually, it entirely helps his case. You are too casual about being wrong. If you make a mistake like this, you should be examining what led to you making that mistake so that you can avoid it in the future. Your acting like you don't care, criticizing those who point out that mistake, and showing no shame about making mistakes like this, shows me that I shouldn't trust what you say because you are not really interested in figuring out what is true about the issue you're discussing

And they're also committing an informal fallacy. This is a bad example.

"Fallacious" is a specific term, meaning that your conclusion might be right, your precepts might be right, but the conclusion does not follow from the precepts.

"Wrong" is a colloquial term, meaning pretty much any of the following: "your precepts are wrong", "your argument is wrong", or "your conclusion is wrong". More often than not, it is used to mean "your conclusion is wrong".

"Specious" is a colloquial term that can be used to mean any of the above, and more. The nuance with the word "specious" is that the person making the argument is being intentionally deceptive.

The short answer is that you probably shouldn't trust what I'm saying.

The long answer is - I was incredulous at the results of the survey. I questioned it, and laid out my reasoning for doing so. Aaron has replied consistently saying that I "fail to accept scientific studies which contradict my beliefs", but I ignored that along with the rest of his bombastic rhetoric. Now he is saying that there is actually evidence linked within the study itself that contradicts my position. I haven't checked, because I am lazy, so I just conceded defeat. On the balance of probabilities, I was never winning that one, anyway.

Agree. I think it is a sign of poor character that you don't seem to care about your reputation.

These are the most valuable kinds of errors. Making an error of fact or a reasoning error can be useful for improving your general practice of intellectual engagement. However, if you fail to examine a true claim because it seems obviously false to you, then you are probably relying on a central assumption that needs to be re-examined. That is, you should regard this kind of mistake as telling you the weaknesses in your model of, in this case, religion.

How so?

You are conflating the definition of "deductive invalidity" with "fallacious" here. As you note above though, not all fallacies are deductively invalid, eg some fallacies are informal, such as the ad hominem fallacy. In actual fact, I don't think there is a consensus understanding of "fallacy" in philosophy or logic. It is sometimes used to refer to specific kinds of reasoning errors, such as the standard named fallacies you learn in Logic 101, sometimes people use it to refer to any error of reasoning.

But God doesn't do divine intervention when it provides almost irrefutable evidence he exists. He won't help you win laying 6-5 on count flips if you flip all day. And he won't save lives in completely obvious hopeless cases. So that leaves you with a God who only answers prayers where they don't expose his existence or one who doesn't answer prayers at all. Seems more likely that God would choose to be the third type rather than be handcuffed the way the second type is.

You can dress this up as much as you like. The above is the exact definition of "fallacy".

Errors of fact are not particularly informative. They are probative to the case in question, but have little value outwith.

I made an error in judgement, or "in law", if you like. Those errors can indeed be didactic. However, I disagree with you that that specific one was.

You are welcome to suppose whatever you want about God. If you think that God would reach that particular conclusion, so be it.

Basically, propositions of this nature move towards either the mechanization of God or a type of power play with God. Almost like in a seance, you're trying to force God to appear where and when you want him to. If you could force God to change coin flips for you whenever you wanted, it would flip the relationship around and make man the superior being.

I would assent that if you wanted to prove God's existence by such means, it's entirely reasonable to conclude he doesn't exist. This is because I would agree that if you were in search of a reductionist type of god (a god defined by simple causal relationships) that I don't think there's evidence for one and also that I just don't think you'll find one.

The comparison I would use is that this is some sort of mind-reading game. You can watch me perform an action, but you cannot determine my motivations from the action. I could tell you "My motivation for X was Y" but you wouldn't have any way of knowing whether my statement was true. In the same way, if you assert "God wouldn't do X because of Y" you're playing the same type of mind-reading game.

Incidentally, this type of reasoning is part of what moves part of the line of reasoning from a deism to theism. The reasoning (roughly) goes like this:

If there is a deistic god, then there's basically no chance of knowing anything more about it. You're stuck with no possibility of moving forward in increasing in knowledge about it. And if that's how the universe is, then so be it.

Ultimately, if you're looking at this type of question, you have to come to some sort of decision about whether to advance the conversation from here. My decision was that I would rather be found seeking an impossible to know god than not seeking a knowable god. This isn't a deductive argument. This is a decision.

So the "axiom" (I guess that's probably the best way to phrase how it operates) is that I would not care about a deistic god. If it's true, then it ends the inquiry and there's nothing to explain. In many ways, that would work similarly to the "goddidit" explanation. (Yes, none of this "proves" anything. That's not the point.)

Going back to some of the other topics touched on throughout the discussion, this is where I can recognize that different people would take different intellectual pathways and reach other conclusions that appear to be perfectly logical. I recognize that it creates a form of "bias" and the absence of things like a "neutral" starting point." I've often used a phrase like "What is rational is a function of what is assumed." All of these things are expressions that resulted from reflecting on trying to understand how I understand things.

No, you are wrong. It is possible to make a deductively valid argument that is fallacious.

1. We should reject drug policy proposals from anyone who was arrested for drug possession.
2. Thompson was arrested for drug possession.
3. Therefore, we should reject Thompson's drug policy proposal.

This argument is deductively valid - that is, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. However, it is also an ad hominem argument and hence fallacious. Thus, your definition of "fallacious" is too narrow, not capturing some of the most well-known kinds of fallacies.

I think we are broadly in agreement. You said "fallacies are an error in reasoning" and I said yes. Maybe if we differ, it is in our definition of "reasoning", not in our definition of "fallacy".

100% agree that the above is an example of a fallacy.

Edit: having thought about it, maybe not. The ad hominem in the above is in the premise, not in the argument. So, maybe, it's "wrong" or "specious", but not fallacious per se. It's a tricky one. The canonical fallacious version would be:

1. Thompson was arrested for drug possession.
2. We should reject drug policy proposals from anyone who was arrested for drug possession.
3. Therefore, we should reject Thompson's drug policy proposal.

If you are suggesting that a fallacy can be found in the premise(s) of an argument, I respectfully disagree. In the example above, I would deconstruct (1) into it's own syllogism to demonstrate that it contains fallacious reasoning. However, the presented syllogism is not fallacious.

I think my position on this is basically, "for a given syllogism, if we accept 1 as true, does 3 follow from 2 (formal) and is 2 sensible (informal)?"

This sidesteps the issue. Seeking an impossible to know god is not really objectionable to most atheists - in some sense that is also what I've been doing for the last twenty years as well. It is going beyond searching to belief with which atheists disagree.

For instance, I think none of the philosophical defenses of morality I'm aware of rise above plausibility. So I would hesitate to say that I believed that, say, consequentialism is true. But I do think of morality as forced - inaction is itself a morally significant act in most systems of morality. Thus, I might say that I am a consequentialist as a matter of moral commitment, without really thinking that I know enough to say I believe it to be true.

I can understand someone being a Christian in this commitment sense (e.g. Christian existentialism), but I don't see how the contingencies of human decision-making make a difference in whether a god actually exists. Thus, this seems to have little to do with the truth of the matter.

I view rationality as a tool. Thus, I would rather say that rationality is a function of a goal than a starting place. This means that if we talk about rational beliefs, we can do so only within the context of specific goals for having beliefs. I mostly keep to the goal of believing what is true and not believing what is false. For that goal, believing in the existence of the gods of religion seems irrational. However, I recognize that other people have different goals for belief, and that these other goals can rationally lead to a belief in god and religion. Nonetheless, I still reject these other goals as worthy of guiding belief.

Whoa, I was trying to get 5:4. Stop knocking my action.

So - why do you pray?

For all your bloviating, this is where you're fundamentally wrong.

OrP - in that "weak atheists attack" thread, there was a poster who attacked and denigrated you continuously. While reading that thread, I felt it was very unfair, as it did not appear that you had done anything to justify it.

After your interaction with me in this thread, I now understand perfectly.

It's not this simple. It is true that the content of the premises are irrelevant for formal fallacies. For example, affirming the consequent is a formal fallacy.

4. If A then B.
5. B
6. Therefore, A.

Here it doesn't matter what A or B mean, the error is one of deductive logic (hence the name "formal" fallacy, i.e. an error of reasoning applying only to the form of the argument). However, this is not true of informal fallacies. For example:

7. Dr Smith, who is a well-known doctor, says that abortion is not immoral.
8. Therefore, abortion is likely not immoral.

This is an argument from authority fallacy. Being a well-known doctor doesn't make you an expert on the morality of abortion. Thus, appealing to the authority of Dr Smith as a reason to accept the conclusion is an error. But this error depends on whether or not Dr Smith is actually an expert on the topic, which does depend on the meaning of the constituent terms in the argument - hence making the error not a formal, but informal error (for instance, some appeals to authority are not errors at all).

I'm not sure what point you are making by switching the order of the premises in the example in my previous post. You are using these terms in non-standard ways from my own experience in logic.

Good.

What if he is deistic until after you die?